Apparently, the mod requires Leopard. I have Tiger (OS X 10.4) installed at present, or I did until this afternoon. Until now, it has served me well, but it’s not like I mind having an updated OS at all. My brother had spare Leopard discs on hand, and was quite happy to drop then off at the house last night. All I needed to do was back up a few files (just to be safe) and install the update.

Or so I thought. I forgot one thing, however: my PowerBook’s DVD drive refuses to read DVDs. It will read CDs just fine, which could mean that the laser glass needs polishing, but…well…I just don’t feel like prying the laptop open for something like that right now. The time investment required is…significant.

But I digress.

I backed up my files to an external hard drive and asked around the office as to whether anyone had an external DVD drive. I know we’re supposed to have one, but nobody was sure where it was. I had just deleted my (metastable) OS X 10.6 virtual machine, as well, so the option of imaging the DVD to a USB stick on my Windows computer was out of th question.

I did, however, have that external hard drive.

If you think about it, all an external hard drive is, really, is a hard drive with either an ATA or SATA connector (data and power) and a small circuit board that bridges between that and a USB connection. Oh, and a pretty case. Hard drives and optical drives both use either ATA or SATA to connect to a computer when installed internally…so I reasoned that a hard drive case should work to connect a run-of-the-mill DVD drive to the PowerBook. A quick bit of scrounging around the office turned up an unused ATA DVD drive, and it jut so happens that the Vantec hard drive I had just finished using to back up my data was in an ATA-specific case.

Ideal!

One quick disassembly later...

And yes, the OS X install DVD mounted correctly once I plugged this thing in. Not that I really doubted that it would — an ATA-to-USB interface should, properly, be totally agnostic as to the exact sort of ATA device it is connected to; it should just facilitate communication between that device and the OS on whatever it is being connected to. And it did that quite marvelously, I must say.

Although, it looks beastly.

Of course, mounting the DVD is one thing. Booting from it, which is required to install the OS, is something else.

Fortunately, that's what the OPTION key is for!

It’s funny, I think, how the firmware that is running in the above draws it’s basic interface appearance from the “classic” Mac OS design school. This is the boot menu on a Mac (or, at least, on a PowerPC Mac); the USB drive is not the primary boot device, but can be selected as the one-time boot volume.

And the install proceeds...

Of course, installing the OS is only half the battle; the updates that typically follow an install are usually the longer and more tedious part of the process. We’ll see, I suppose.

Anyhow, there it is: a thrown-together, impromptu external DVD drive, the Frankendrive. Ingenuity means that it works, not that it’s pretty.

She’s doing very well, but please do offer your prayers for her healing, that it may be expedient and complete.

Also, please feel free to use the contact form to send congratulatory or encouraging notes to Grace, who — next to God — deserves all the credit and recognition for this event. She has approached this whole experience with courage, determination, and boundless love.

I’ve got a few pictures of both Mom and baby, and I’ll be posting them soon-ish. For now, though, we’re just going to take some time to welcome Ella into the world, and will get around to pictures, and introductions to friends and family, in due time. So if you’ve called, emailed, or otherwise sent in a word to see how things are going…thank you for your care, and we will get back to you in a bit. But please just give us some time to ourselves, that we might rest and that Grace might heal.

Oh, yeah: for those family members who registered a guess in the baby pool, we would just like to say that nobody won, in that nobody actually guessed the correct date. Guesses ranged from about the 17th to the 31st, and covered almost every day in between…but nobody picked the 26th. A couple people did guess the exact birth weight, however.

Thank you so much, you two!

There’s just one problem.

Something happened to the first disc, and as a result it wasn’t finalized. What finalization does, in DVD camcorder parlance, is “closes off” the disc and readies it for playback in a home DVD player or computer DVD-ROM drive. It’s a common step to omit when one is filming something like a wedding — you should theoretically just be able to swap a disc out after it fills up and finish recording the event, and then go back later and finalize all the discs you used and be done with it.

That’s not what happened with the wedding video, unfortunately — something went wrong, and the unfinalized disc, while quite obviously full of data, doesn’t recognize more than the first 10 minutes of footage as being present when played back in the DVD camcorder used for the recording.

That’s bad.

What’s worse, of course, is that the disc isn’t finalized — that makes it unreadable in most DVD-ROM drives, which means that even manually extracting the data isn’t feasible.

Or is it?

Enter ISO Buster.

This handy utility is saving my butt. Not only does it enable my work PC to read the contents of the DVD, but it has actually found and extracted most of the lost video segments. There’s about…well, I would guess there’s another 10 minutes of footage that I have to recover, some of which could theoretically be left if it had to be. Some of it absolutely needs to be pulled off the disc if at all possible…although at least I was able to recover the exchange of the rings (the vows will hopefully be recovered in the last two files I have to pull off the disc).

I’m not out of the woods just yet as far as getting this video back is concerned, but I just wanted to stop and mention, in brief, a handy utility for salvaging data off of corrupted and damaged DVDs. Not exactly the sort of thing everyone has a pressing need for…but hey, if it helps someone out of dire straits, it’s worth mentioning on that possibility alone.

Still, this is going to be a lesson for me. Next time I need to tape anything, I’ll go and buy one of these.

And it has been a lot of fun. Being married to Grace feels really…natural. It feels like something that was meant to be, like it’s part of some purpose that transcends even the attraction and love shared between two people. That ought not to come as a surprise, as the Sacrament of Marriage is a part of the ongoing revelation of God’s purpose for men and women, and as our lives continue on this now joined path that revelation will play itself out all the more fully.

So my hope is that Grace and I continue to grow together ever closer in love, and in the love of Christ. If there’s any higher calling in this life, I can’t think what it would be.

It was nice to just get away from all the hectic tedium of the wedding and post-wedding frenzy, and to be equally sure it was nice to just get away from the apartment for a day or ten. I had only moved my things over to Grace’s a couple of days prior to the wedding itself, and hadn’t had time to unpack much. Add that to a considerable load of gifts* and it makes for one very messy, box-filled apartment indeed.

And really, I don’t think we could have picked a better place to escape to than the town on Crete that we ended up in. Hania is not exactly a “small town”, with a population somewhere between 57,000 and 70,000 depending on which source you consult, but the architecture has strong Venetian influences, and in the “off season” it has a slow, relaxed pace to it that we just drank in for all the days we were there.

I’ll have more detailed write-ups of the wedding and the honeymoon to post in…well, maybe a few days, maybe a bit longer than that, complete with pictures. For the time being, let me just say that it’s great to finally be married to a girl whom I have loved so much for so many years now. I’m grateful that we had a blast in Greece and that we were able to travel in safety…but that gratitude cannot compare to the joy and praise that I feel in my heart at finally being able to see here there on the next pillow when I wake up in the morning.

* the generosity of our friends and families has been more than overwhelming, and we find ourselves so grateful for all of it. Thank you, everyone.

And about time, too. Seriously, this has been an event almost six years in the making. And the more I think about it, the more I begin to suspect that this is what was meant to be, even if at times I’ve railed and raged against it with most of the faculties I apparently possess.

If there was ever a sign that this was meant to go somewhere, it’s that Grace a) actually humoured me enough on our first date to let me ask someone to take a picture of us, and that b) she kept the picture. Who does that, seriously? Who so invests himself into a first date that they flag down a total stranger in the mall, hand her a camera, and ask her to take a picture of himself and the girl that he asked out not a week prior?

Well, me, evidently.

But that’s how things work with the Lord — revelation is gradual, and things that don’t always seem to make sense in the moment will suddenly become completely sensible after some indeterminate length of time. This one picture, so off the cuff and random at the time it was taken, now has incredible meaning…and, in a way, always did. What couple who makes it to the altar can actually say they have a picture of their very first date ever…of their very first foray into the world as a couple, even if only in a nominal capacity?

There’s an incredible meaningfulness there, and yet it’s not something that was instantly apparent. But as I put the finishing touches on the slideshow for the wedding, and as I inserted a scan of that exact picture as the first picture of the “us as a couple” section of the presentation, suddenly it made perfect sense why I was suddenly inspired to ask a passerby to take that picture. That flash of inspiration, that split-second decision…and six years later, all the reasons behind it become plain.

This is meant to be. It always was. And what a fool I was in those times where I tried to make it into something that wasn’t meant to be.

It’s more than about time that Grace and I were married, and after almost six years we are about to become a promise fulfilled. How amazing is that, that men and women can be united in that way? And how amazing is the author of that unity, for the way He quietly but consistently hints at his plan, and inspires action in the hearts and minds of those same men and women?

By some miracle, I managed to keep meticulous notes about each and every day of the experience, and so in the coming few days I’ll be converting my scribbled notes into full articles and posting them here, at Ubi, and at the wedding website. For the moment, it will have to suffice when I say that on the whole, this was one of the most amazing experiences, and one of the most incredible journeys, I have ever had or undertaken.

And I’ve got 1726 photos to show for it. Now, admittedly, I won’t be keeping all of those…but still, that number ought to give the reader a decent idea as to the magnitude of the Jamboree. Failing that, there are a few statistics attached to the Jamboree’s Wikipedia entry that may prove enlightening.

I also made many good friends, and I would even venture to say that in working with the people of ICCS — the International Catholic Conference of Scouting — defined for me at long last just what my Scouting career means to me, and demonstrated just how I want to conduct myself as a Scout, and what I want to work toward as a member of that world-wide organization.

I made a number of new friends, met some incredible people, tasted great English bitters and IPAs, attended Mass and Taize prayer with what was, for me, a heightened frequency, and worked with between 50 and 100 kids a day doing little things to help them learn (or learn more) about the Catholic faith. And in the off hours, I had some memorable times with some or all of the members of the 59th Rover Crew that were in attendance at the Jamboree.

I have to say, though, that the best part of the Jamboree was coming through the doors out of the customs area at the Edmonton International Airport and seeing Grace there. I had missed her so much during the trip, and seeing her smiling face across the arrivals area was the first breath of fresh air for this man when he finally made it home again.

Home. It’s strange, but over the course of the last three weeks, the very meaning of that word seems to have changed so much for me. Home is not, for me, the place where I’m currently living, the place I rest my head at the end of the day, or the place where my family is. Seeing Grace again, I knew at once that the sneaking suspicion of a feeling I’d been having all Jamboree was true: home is where she is. Home is with her.

And so, O Reader, on that note I will leave, and will tell you only that you ought to keep checking back — in the weeks to come, those 1726 photos (or as many of them as I decide to keep) will make their way onto the site, as will the day-by-day articles describing this incredible trip abroad.

Which means I’m going to have one very full inbox when I get back.

Anyhow, for the next three weeks or so, I’ll be spending most of my time in Hylands Park, which is north-east of London, participating in the 21st World Scout Jamboree — which, incidentally, also marks and commemorates the centenary of Scouting. I’ll be attending the camp as an IST, an ‘offer of service’ — basically, I’m going there to help run one of the events.

Currently, as far as I have heard, I am going to be working with the Faith and Beliefs component of the camp, and while I haven’t the first clue what that entails, I imagine that it will basically involve me spending a lot of my day talking with kids about Catholicism. Which should be a lot of fun, I expect. I will, of course, have the camera in tow, so hopefully I will be able to bring back lots of pictures for everyone to enjoy…although admittedly, most of them will probably be of the Jamboree, since I don’t expect there will be much time for sightseeing while I am there.

Now, with all that preamble out of the way, here’s the important stuff to be said.

You’ve been the most special, wonderful person in my life since the day I met you, and I look forward to seeing you again when I land in Canada. Your smiling face and your dancing eyes can always lift my spirits, and I already want to hear your soft voice again.

Say a prayer for my safe travel, love, and I will figure out what the best way is to get in touch with you as soon as I land. I can’t wait for August (or, come to think of it, October)!

Mom, Dad, Megan, Katie, Carmen, and Simon, I miss all of you, and all I can ask is for your prayers for a safe trip. I look forward to seeing everyone when I get back (including you, Meg, if you do happen to visit in mid-to-late August).

Family and friends: I miss all of you as well, and I ask for your prayers for a safe trip as well. I look forward to seeing you all again when I get back as well.

And to everyone, I look forward to sharing stories and pictures when I return, and I hope that you all have a great middle-of-summer.

If that fails (as I expect it eventually will), I am going to save up and get me one of these…and then dual-boot the thing. And hey, the Apple computers use the T-series Core 2 chips…can’t fault that.